OK folks, yet again months have passed without a word from me on here. I really am not much of a blogger, I don’t have that many interesting thoughts to share.
Cut to the chase. I have a new job in Sydney, so it looks like I will be staying here for a year or so. It will be my second full time job ever and it finds me after about seven years of freelancing and general slacking off while traveling N.America. I really loved the freedom that freelancing gave me and I will probably go back to it again, but for now I am a 9-5 (well, 9-6 actually) salary junky.
I am quite excited about this new job as it is a kind of interesting position, I don’t really have a job title, I am just part of a team that has the ambitious goal of being the best digital agency in Australia. It’s quite a task and there is a lot of hard work ahead but I don’t think it will be boring.
In other news. I just had about the best weekend of surf ever. The waves have been perfect for me here in Manly. I have been able to catch some bigger waves and feel like I have leveled up in my surf skills.
In attempting to catch bigger waves I have experienced much bigger and kind of scary wipe-outs. Bigger waved dump you ruthlessly unless you think quick and know where to put your weight on your board. Too far forward and the board goes nose down and you tumble into the washing machine, too far back and the wave passes you by. You may think that erring on the side of caution and putting your weight to the back is best, but missing a wave feels almost as bad as getting dumped by a wave.
I can now reliably stand up on 90% of all the waves I go for and I am thinking about buying a slightly smaller board. Next week I am going to hire a smaller board to see how I go.
February 24th, 2008.
Here we go with a round up of Thursday’s surfing. I was supposed to rent a board and skip the lesson, but I am a spaz and forgot to bring some ID or credit card to secure the deposit on the board. So I took another lesson, got to wear my own new wetsuit though, no more ripped up surf school wetties.
The instructor told us it was going to be a tough lesson as the waves were fairly big and very heavy. I think we had about a 4ft swell and there was a strong undercurrent. The “rip” was pulling in one direction and the waves pushing in another, this made it really hard to get out to the lineup out the back. (more…)
December 8th, 2007.
What the heck is this thing? It’s kind of big and certainly an arachnid but nothing I have seen before. My skin is creeping just thinking about it. Look how close it is to coming in the house.
Looks like it is a Netcasting spider, I really hope it does not spin a web over my door tonight.
December 8th, 2007.
Back in 2004 I got bitten on my hand by some insect or perhaps a spider, I don’t know what it was. But the result was an itching painful inflammation that kind of took over my hand and looked not unlike the following picture (I sincerely apologise for the poor taste of newspaper article, I have a warped sense of humour):
Well I got bitten again last night and it seems the same sort of thing is going to happen. My hand is pretty itchy and already it has puffed up a bit. If it gets worse I will take a photo to share. I have put some antihistamine creme on it (thanks ma) but it’s not really responding to that. I really hope the dull pain does not get into the joints again, that was kind of worse than the itching before.
My hand is fully recovered now. It was itchy for a couple of days and it puffed up a little but now it is totally normal save a small bump where the bite was made.
December 5th, 2007.
I went out into the surf with a 10ft foam ironing board again on Sunday. This time I was fairly well rested and had no hangover, I also went for an 11:30am lesson instead of a 9am so I had time for a pancake breakfast. Food, rest and no alcohol make for a much more enjoyable time in the surf.
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December 4th, 2007.
